Product Design Lead

Humaans; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Share options

Health insurance

MacBook and tools provided

25 days paid time off

Team events and offsites

Private health, vision, dental

Enhanced parental leave

Job summary

Humaans is seeking a Product Design Lead to shape the direction of our platform and lead design across key product areas. This hands-on leadership role involves owning work from exploration to launch, making strategic design decisions, and guiding experiences that connect customer needs with business goals.

You'll collaborate with Engineering and broader teams to translate complex requirements into simple, intuitive experiences, while setting a high bar for design quality in a fast-growing

Qualifications

• Strong product thinking and ability to connect customer needs, business objectives and design decisions.
• Excellent interaction design skills, with the ability to define behaviours, flows and patterns across a product.
• Exceptional visual design craft and strong judgement across typography, colour, layout, hierarchy, iconography and aesthetics.
• Experience leading the design of significant product areas and making strategic decisions about how products evolve.

Responsibilities

• Lead and oversee multiple product areas from early exploration through to launch.
• Own strategic design decisions and help shape the direction of the product.
• Design end-to-end flows and experiences that make complex workflows feel simple and intuitive.
• Connect business vision with customer needs, turning them into thoughtful product experiences.
• Define how experiences behave and establish interaction patterns for consistency across the product.

Skills

Product design leadership

Interaction design

Visual design

Design judgement

Cross-functional collaboration

UX strategy

Job description

Humaans is building the next generation of infrastructure for the workplace; software designed for companies that are scaling fast, operating globally, and pushing into new boundaries.

What started as a system of record has evolved into a broader platform for operating people globally. With Athena, our agentic AI layer, Humaans moves beyond data management into intelligent orchestration, connecting workflows across HR, IT, Finance, and Operations so organisations can act faster and with greater confidence, redefining how work gets done.

The role

We’re looking for a Product Design Lead to help shape the direction of Humaans and lead the design of some of our most important product areas.

This is a hands-on design leadership role. You’ll remain close to the craft, owning work from early exploration through to launch, while making strategic decisions about how the product should evolve. You’ll define how experiences behave, establish the interaction patterns that connect them and shape the visual language that determines how Humaans is perceived and used.

You’ll work closely with Engineering and the wider team to connect our business vision with real customer problems, turning complex requirements and technical capabilities into experiences that feel simple and intuitive. You’ll have significant autonomy, and we’ll expect you to use strong product and design judgement to help determine what we build and how we build it.

What you’ll do

Lead and oversee multiple product areas from early exploration through to launch

Own strategic design decisions and help shape the direction of the product

Design end-to-end flows and experiences that make complex workflows feel simple and intuitive

Connect our business vision with customer needs, turning them into thoughtful and useful product experiences

Define how experiences behave and establish interaction patterns that create consistency across the product

Shape and evolve our visual language across typography, colour, layout, iconography and overall aesthetic

Work closely with Engineering to translate complex technical architectures into simple, intuitive user interactions

Set a high bar for design quality while balancing craft with the pace and changing priorities of a growing company

Articulate the thinking behind your decisions clearly and bring the broader team along through your work

What we’re looking for

A strong individual contributor with the leadership skills and judgement to influence product direction

Experience leading the design of significant product areas and making strategic decisions about how products evolve

Excellent interaction design skills, with the ability to define behaviours, flows and patterns across a product

Exceptional visual design craft and strong judgement across typography, colour, layout, hierarchy, iconography and aesthetics

Strong product thinking and an ability to connect customer needs, business objectives and design decisions

The confidence to form a point of view, make decisions and explain the reasoning and trade-offs behind them

Experience working closely with engineers and navigating technical complexity to arrive at simple solutions

The ability to execute at speed without compromising the quality and thoughtfulness of the experience

Comfort operating with autonomy and navigating the changing priorities of a growing startup

You may not be a great fit if

You prefer focusing on execution after product direction and requirements have already been decided

You want to move away from hands-on design into a primarily people management role

You prefer specialising exclusively in either interaction or visual design rather than taking responsibility for the complete experience

You’re uncomfortable forming a strong point of view and making strategic design decisions with incomplete information

You prefer working within an established design language rather than helping define and evolve one

You need lengthy design cycles before sharing work, testing ideas or moving towards implementation

You prefer handing finished designs to Engineering rather than working closely together through the details of how they are built

This is an in-person role. Our team comes together in the office Monday through Thursday, while most of the team collaborates in person on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

Early stage startups can be messy – we know that. We're putting effort in providing you with the best employee experience and a quality driven environment in exchange for trusting us.

Market-leading compensation that reflects your value

25 days paid time off each year plus public holidays

Share Options with 5-year exercise window so you don’t feel pressure to exercise if you leave

Quarterly team events, and company offsites

Top tier private coverage for health, vision and dental care

A new MacBook and tools you need to do your best work

Enhanced parental leave with up to 16 weeks for primary and 4 weeks for secondary

HR tech is having its AI moment and we’re positioned to own it. Humaans started as a next-gen HRIS taking on large incumbents in a massive market. We’ve since evolved into something even bigger: an AI platform that sits across workforce data and automates the operational layer of HR entirely; the natural progression of what we’ve been building toward.

The product is highly differentiated. It’s built around a structured workforce data model that makes AI reliable in an HR context, something no one else has gotten right. Customers notice the difference immediately.

We’re backed by Y Combinator, Lachy Groom, Moonfire, Frontline Ventures, and operators who’ve built some of the most consequential software companies of the last decade: the founders of Slack, Figma, and Shopify, and Asana’s former CRO and Head of OpenAI International.

We’re a small team with an unapologetically high bar. It shows up in the product, in how we communicate, and in the standards we hold each other to.

Our Commitment to Diversity

At Humaans we’re looking for genuinely good people that are transparent and emphatic. We’re committed to providing equal opportunities, a diverse and inclusive work environment, and ensuring a fair interview process for everyone. You’re welcome to apply no matter your gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, civil or family status, age, disability, or race.

Privacy notice

We care about your privacy. When you apply for a role at Humaans, we’ll collect and process your personal data as part of our recruitment process. This includes things like your CV, contact details, and any other information you choose to share. We may also contact you about future opportunities. You can ask us to delete your data at any time. For more details, see our Privacy Policy .